Gregory J. Wallance

Gregory J. Wallance has a wide breadth of experience in white collar litigation and civil and commercial litigation.

Greg served as Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1979 to 1985. As an AUSA, he was a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted six United States congressmen and a United States senator of bribery (ABSCAM became the basis for the movie American Hustle), and lead trial prosecutor in the highly publicized United States v. The Southland Corporation, which resulted in the conviction of a major corporation and a former New York City councilman arising from a bribery investigation.

At Kaye Scholer, Greg has represented numerous individuals and companies in state and federal criminal and regulatory proceedings, in internal investigations, and in implementing corporate compliance programs. Most recently, he represented companies and individuals in such high-profile criminal matters as the UN Oil-for-Food bribery scandal, the KPMG tax-shelter investigation, the stock-options-backdating scandal, and the food additive, liquid chemical shipping, DRAM products, LCD (liquid crystal display), and automotive supply industry international cartel investigations and prosecutions by the DOJ. He served as a member of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group to the US Sentencing Commission on the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, and has testified before the Sentencing Commission and Congress as an expert on corporate governance issues. He is the principal editor of the Kaye Scholer LLP Deskbook on Internal Investigations, Corporate Compliance and White Collar Issues (Practising Law Institute).

On the civil side, from 1995–2001, Greg served as Chief Litigation Counsel (while remaining a Partner at Kaye Scholer) at Kidder, Peabody & Co. Incorporated, where he both supervised and tried securities litigations. He recently concluded a fourteen-year accounting fraud and malpractice litigation in federal court on behalf of a bankrupt pharmaceutical wholesale distributor against a major accounting firm that resulted in a substantial recovery for creditors, and represented a leading liquor company in a derivative lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court arising from the multibillion-dollar sale of Grey Goose vodka.

In the product liability area, on behalf of foreign companies sued in the highly publicized Chinese drywall litigation, Greg resolved thousands of homeowner claims for defective drywall board by negotiating and supervising a “pilot remediation program” that remediated, or is remediating, more than 2,500 homes. MDL Drywall Litigation Judge Eldon E. Fallon (E.D. La.) called the pilot program “very successful” and stated that “I have been mentioning [the pilot program] to my colleagues around the country as a potential method of trying to resolve these [mass tort] cases.” He has tried numerous criminal and civil cases and arbitrations, and argued appeals in multiple state and federal appellate courts.

As pro bono counsel, he has filed amicuscuriae briefs in the Supreme Court on behalf of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and other leading mental health organizations in a case involving excessive police force against persons with mental disorders; in the Eleventh Circuit on behalf of Autism Speaks in a challenge to the Florida Medicaid agency’s denial of effective therapy for impoverished children with autism spectrum disorders; and in the Second Circuit on behalf of a leading social scientist and child justice organizations in a case arising under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Greg has written op-eds for, among others, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, USA Today, Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Boston Herald, The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Daily News, The Arizona Republic, The Village Voice, The Jerusalem Post, Forbes.com, Bloomberg.com and Haaretz.com. He is the author of the book Papa’s Game, which received a nonfiction nomination for an Edgar Allan Poe Award; the historical novel Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane’s Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started the Civil War (The Boston Globe: “An evocative historical novel.”); and the nonfiction America’s Soul in the Balance, The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department, and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy (americassoulinthebalance.com) (The Jewish Book Council: “An important contribution to the debate surrounding the Roosevelt Administration and the politics of rescue. Reads like a thriller.”). He has lectured on his books at the Harvard Law School, the New-York Historical Society, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

A veteran of multiple human rights missions on behalf of Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch, among others, he co-produced the HBO film “Sakharov,” about the Soviet nuclear physicist who won the Nobel Peace Prize and which starred Jason Robards, Jr. and Glenda Jackson. He was a co-host of the BBC’s “The Law Show,” has been quoted frequently in major newspapers, and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and NBC’s “The Today Show.”